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In the end, Shalom Weiss, a world-class swindler from Scranton, was no match for Joe Judge, a University of Scranton accounting major who joined the FBI.

Using sleuthing skills worthy of a John le Carre novel, Mr. Judge and his band of fellow FBI agents along with various law enforcement agencies on three continents put Mr. Weiss in a place where no man had ever gone before: prison for 845 years.

The story of how Mr. Judge, who was the lead FBI agent in the team that tracked Mr. Weiss from Brazil to Vienna, is featured on an episode of "American Greed" scheduled to air Wednesday, March 24, on CNBC.

Mr. Judge, who was interviewed in December for the TV show at his home in Florida, said he wound up investigating and later chasing Mr. Weiss in a massive insurance fraud case the FBI opened in the 1990s.

The investigation took several years before Mr. Weiss and others were indicted on charges they brought down an insurance company and swindled thousands of retirees out of millions of dollars.

Mr. Weiss' role in the scam, which at the time was the largest corporate fraud in the country, was not immediately apparent.

"He had these straw men, these dupes, four of them," Mr. Judge said. "They signed everything."

"I didn't see Weiss' name until years into the investigation," Mr. Judge said.

Mr. Judge sees Mr. Weiss as something of an evil genius.

"He is so diabolical that if he met you tomorrow he would already have already planned what you would be doing (for him) six months from now," Mr. Judge said. "This guy is a genius."

Mr. Weiss also had character traits and habits he could not shake. His affinity for the Hasidic Jewish community and love of fine dining, fancy casinos and high-priced call girls gave Mr. Judge and the FBI some hunches where he might be hiding after he vanished when his money laundering and racketeering case went to trial.

"This guy had a paw print like Bigfoot," Mr. Judge said.

There are about seven or eight cities around the world with large Hasidic populations, and FBI agents stationed at U.S. Embassies in those countries were asked to be on the lookout for Mr. Weiss, Mr. Judge said.

A lead came out of Brazil, where there was information Mr. Weiss had a girlfriend in the Sao Paulo area and he might be in town.

Mr. Judge left for South America and hooked up with local police and Interpol agents. They didn't find Mr. Weiss, but a check of his phone records led the investigators to a home in one of the poorest sections of the city and the identity of a 27-year-old woman whom Mr. Weiss was dating.

They followed her to Vienna, where she was met by Mr. Weiss, though he didn't look like the man they were looking for. Mr. Weiss, who was 40 pounds lighter and had shaved off his beard, took the woman to an apartment, where he was arrested.

Mr. Weiss, who had been on the run for a year, fought extradition to the U.S. But he was eventually sent to the federal prison near Waymart to begin serving the longest prison sentence ever handed down in federal court.

But Mr. Weiss has not given up. He is appealing the legal grounds for his extradition.

"As I go into great detail on the show, he claims the U.S. government lied," Mr. Judge said in a telephone interview from Florida. "That's his lie."

Mr. Weiss has enlisted the support of some powerful people in his fight to get out of federal prison, Mr. Judge said.

"The president of Austria wrote to President Bush, saying please send Weiss back and we will put him in prison here for a year or two, then he will be rehabilitated," Mr. Judge said.

In one sense, Mr. Judge, a West Scranton native who graduated from the University of Scranton in 1968, marveled at how Mr. Weiss was able to ingratiate himself with Austrian officials.

"He enters Austria with a phony Brazilian passport and makes fools of the Austrian immigration and police," Mr. Judge said. "He's there as an illegal alien, yet he's got the juice to get the Austrian president to write a letter."

Asked how that could happen, Mr. Judge said, "because they think he's a great guy, or some palms got greased."

Contact the writer: jmcdonald@timesshamrock.com

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15 posted comments

This show airs Wednesday at 9p - featuring Joe. You can see a clip of Joe at americangreed.cnbc.com. Should be good - They gave the crook 845 years behind bars.

Mother Hubert,It's WEIS Foods, and no, he is not related. Sigfreid Weis is one of the wealthiest people in Pennsylvania and one of the most generous. Care to guess what name is on the children's hospital in Danville?